HHC Blog

This is a continuation of my submission for XDrive Photo Lesson 4 – Breathing Space 😉 Mainly, I am trying to incorporate some (all?) of Raj’s comments.

(All photos were taken with Nikon D750.)

Photo #1

Raj said, “Pic 1: in my opinion there are too many things here. I would have eliminated the trees across the water and just left the tree reflection in the water.”

(The new one is on the left.)

Just for the fun…

Photo #2

Raj edited photo #2 (Thanks) and posted it on his blog, here. I tried to see if I could come up with the same result, but this is the best I could do. 😉 Well, I do like it better than before and that makes me happy enough. 😉

Photo #3

Raj said, “Pic 3: … But in this case since sky is pretty ordinary so probably you could have put only 1/3 of the sky here.”

I did. I thought I did. 😉 The problem is that the trees on the right are taller than the left. Based on the trees on the right, the sky was exactly 1/3. But Raj had a point that the sky wasn’t very interesting, so maybe it should be less than 1/3?

I spent more time on this photo than the others. After cropping out some sky, I felt I had too much of the foreground grass. And I wanted to keep a wide view… (on and on.)

Anyway, here is the final result. I still think it can be better, but this is it for now. 😉

After:

Before:

Photo #4

Raj said, “Pic 4: Composition could have been bit to the left so the subject has equal space on either side. Also the pic needs some tilt adjustment.”

It’s too late to change the composition to a bit left, am I right?

Unfortunately, my old habit hasn’t left me. I often feel that I am under a lot of pressure to catch the exact moment. I feel I only have a second to take the photo before the scene changes, so I hurriedly lift the camera and click. This is one thing that I really would like to change.

I had thought of applying tilt adjustment before posting this photo (really.) After looking at the roof line, and many lines on the boardwalk, I got confused which line should be absolute horizontal, so I left it as the way it was. Of course, Raj would notice it…

What do you think?

(Lois, can you see that I have a lot of fun? 😉 😉 😉 Here is a big smile from me to you.)

Thanks for visiting my blog.

This is my submission for XDrive Photo Lesson 4 – Breathing Space.

(All photos were taken with Nikon D750.)

“White Space is where the world and all distraction falls away. Where the voice of the Divine can be heard. Where the Truth of who you are is found. Where miracles happen.”
― Valerie Rickel

Valerie said very well, didn’t she? Of course, not everyone feels the same way about white-space. I happen to be one of the believers.

Raj gave a wonderful lesson on white space (breathing space). I am not going to repeat what he said here; I encourage you visit his blog and read it yourself.

After taking a lesson, I often have a feeling that everything is more complicated than what we see on surface. White-space is no exception.

His Space vs. Mine

My husband is a good photographer. He has been shooting photos for more than 60 years (I started 4 years ago, in case you forgot.) We had taken some portraits for relatives from time to time (not too often). Each time after finishing editing his photos, my husband would give them to me to post on my Dropbox so people could download their photos, and, almost every time, I would secretly make some changes on white-space in his photos. Minor changes, I may say, but, it was something I just had to do. Apparently, he feels the same way about my photos. He often told me to increase/decrease white-space here and there, and I simply ignored him.

So, everyone’s breathing space may be different?

My Breathing Space Then vs. Now

I don’t know what others had experienced… after cropping my photos (in a few cases, before cropping), I usually could come up with the “right” amount of breathing space to fully satisfy myself (Satisfy “myself”, I said ;-). I would look at the photo for days and still be very happy with the result. But, sometimes, a month later, I might want to edit the photo again – the white space, for some reason, was no longer satisfy me.

So, my comfortable breathing space may change with time?

Finally, after the cropping exercise I did (see previous post), I have a feeling that there is a tight connection between the story you want to tell and the breathing space you allow your photo to have.

Thanks for visiting my blog.

Yes, this is the same photo I posted before 😉 After reading Raj’s second comment, I thought this might be a good time to practice cropping. After all, I was the one who once said loudly in a workshop that I believed there was no bad photo, only bad cropping. 😉 (Of course, I was kidding, but not totally… ha.)

Every time my daughter comes home, she wants to visit the Walker Art Center in the city. Usually, we would take her there before her flight. On her recent trip home, as usual, we ran out of time after playing a round of miniature golf at its sculpture garden; we had to hurry to the airport.

BUT I have to take a photo of that cherry! While my husband and daughter kept walking toward the parking lot, I quickly ran toward the cherry sculpture. Since I only had time to take one photo (that was what I thought), I had to make a good shot. My first thought was to get down and use sky as the background. Almost immediately, I rejected that idea because (1) the ground was very wet after the morning rain; I didn’t want to take any chance on getting my paints dirty (2) it would take longer to get down and come up since I had bad knees (3) many photographers had already taken that photo.

“No time to think, just click,” I said to myself. So I did.

Checking the photo on the monitor, I noticed the cathedral in the background (I have no idea why I didn’t see it before shooting the photo). “Temptation vs. Discipline” came to my mind. I took a deep breath, took time to compose, and clicked again. I knew a woman was included on the bottom left, but I couldn’t wait for her to leave; we had a flight to catch.

In Raj’s second comment, he offered some cropping (even though he didn’t use this word) ideas for this photo. I like to document and share my learning progress, so here is the result of my first cropping attempt.

I like it much better! (Having the whole spoon in the picture is a plus.) Raj’s first suggestion worked… the lady on the left was gone. Yeah!

Next, I thought I would make a square photo. No particular reason… just for fun.

It looked pretty good… I got excited! Then, I saw that blue rooster, which is one new sculpture in the garden. Rooster had to go!

Finally, portrait mode… like Raj had suggested.

What do you think?

Again, I want to thank Raj. This exercise opened my eyes. 😉

I am taking a trip break for 10 days. Wish you all have wonderful summer days and have a lot of fun!

Thanks for visiting my blog.